“Ifn an event that chairman Theodore C.
/ Sorensen called an “historic occasion,”
_ ‘,the international advisory board of the
Center convened for the first time on
March 7, 2000 in New York City.
Fifteen distinguished leaders and
activists have joined the Board, which is
charged with advising and shaping the
Center’s work. Representing politics, law,
scholarship, activism, the arts, and other
fields, the board members’ extraordinary
diversity of experience promises to give
the Center a unique opportunity to develop ideas that cross usual professional and
disciplinary boundaries.
At the inaugural meeting, board members discussed the history, mission, current projects, and future prospects of the
Center. Citing the need for sustained
attention to ethical issues in the intemational arena, the board recommended that
the Center remain focused on conflicts
and crises arising within and between
countries. The Board further recommended that the Center examine the “ethics of
intervention” as a principal focus in the
coming years.
Board members also laid out an ambitious series of possible programs for the
Center to undertake and suggested criteria
by which the Center’s success could be
judged after a three to five year timespan.
The Board is scheduled to meet formally on an annual basis, but informal
meetings may take place between sessions
in conjunction with Center conferences
and other events.
As part of the Center’s partnership
with the Jerusalem Foundation,
Brandeis University professor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B.
Reich is delivering two public lectures
in Israel in the spring of 2000.
The first, “Ethics, Public Service,
and Income Inequality,” is being given
at the Laromme Hotel in Jerusalem on
May 28. The second, “Globalization
and Its Discontents,” is being delivered
at Tel Aviv University on May 30. The
Center will publish the Jerusalem lecture later in 2000.
The lectures are part of the series,
“Ethics and Human Values,” under the
auspices of Mishkenot Sha’ananim.
The Center has worked with
Mishkenot Sha’ananim to provide
ethics seminars for Israeli professionals in law, medicine, and the military.
(See Board List on page 2)
n Undergraduates head
abroad
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
n Coexistence Initiative
update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
n The Kosovo intervention:
Two perspectives . . . . . . . . . . .4, 5
n “Doing Justice and
Loving Mercy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
n The Japanese American
Internment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Front row, lef to right:
Back row:
Not pictured:
Ismat Kittani, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Theodore C. Sorensen (chair),
Stephen J. Solarz, Judith Schneide,:
Daniel Terris, Sari Nusseibeh, Jehuda Reinharz (president of Brandeis
University), Paul Simon, Liv Vllmann, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, James
Carroll, Joshua Steiner; Diego Arria
Richard J. Goldstone, Tommy Koh, George E Shultz
n Empathy with
“Apartheid’s Crusader” . . . . . . . .7
I “A New Public Education” . . . . . .8
Xiolence and suffering wrack a distant land. Those unaffected watch from afar.
‘\ / When are they obligated to act to relieve the suffering? What kinds of actions should
they take? If they act, will they do more harm than good?
These questions roiled the international community during the 1990s. Action and inaction influenced events in troubled regions of the world. Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo,
East Timor. We are still sorting out the interventions and non-interventions of the past
decade, and wondering whether there is a firm basis for more principled and more effective
courses in the future.
The question of the “ethics of intervention” will govern the work of the Center over the next
several years. The Center’s advisory board has recommended that we look both backward and
forward, in search of ways that scholarly analysis and the insights of practitioners can provide
a stronger basis for decision making and a greater public involvement in those decisions.
Some of this work involves an examination of recent conflicts. Board member Richard
Goldstone is chairing the Independent Commission on Kosovo, whose work will point to
lessons for the future. The debate over these issues is intense, and we intend to consider a
variety of viewpoints. The excerpts in this newsletter from recent talks by Michael Ignatieff
and Kevin Clements - who were on opposite sides regarding the NATO intervention in
Kosovo - illustrate the divide.
But we should also cast a wider net in search of fundamentals. As we consider this
theme, we plan to draw on the insights not only of political theorists and actors, but on a
wide range of disciplines and professionals. We need the insights of moral philosophers to
place intervention in its philosophical context. Historians will help us to compare the
events of recent decades with the actions of men and women in earlier eras. We will draw
upon the experience of professionals in fields like law and medicine who deal with intervention on a smaller scale in their daily practice. And we will look to the ways that writers
and artists have explored this theme in their creative work.
The world is too complex for simple rules of conduct that could govern every situation.
Instead, our goal is to provide the tools for informed and reflective decision making for
actions in the public sphere. Intervention is a matter not only for leaders but for the citizens
of their commonwealths.
As we move forward, the theme of the “ethics of intervention” will complement our
ongoing work on the Brandeis Initiative in Intercommunal Coexistence. To the extent that
many of the international interventions of recent years have revolved around ethnic and
racial conflict, the connection is a natural one for our work.
We welcome your thoughts and suggestions as we plan the activities that will bring
these questions to life.
A
“5
2%J&
Dan Terris,
Director
-he Ethics Center has selected six
’ ’ Brandeis University sophomores
i I and juniors as Student Fellows for
the coming year. These students will be
the third group of Brandeis undergraduates
to undertake fieldwork in troubled areas of
the world on behalf of the Ethics Center
and in service of the cause of peace and
justice.
Sarah-Bess Dworin and Sophia Moon
will work at two sites in Northern
Ireland,-The Rural Community Network
a membership organization that serves as a
voice for rural communities-and The
Corrymeela Community-which is committed to reconciliation work through family and community.
Andrew Slack may join Sarah-Bess
and Sophia at these organizations in
Northern Ireland, or may travel instead to
Israel to work with the Israel/Palestine
Center for Research and Information. This
organization was founded as the first
Israeli/Palestinian attempt to create an institution for ongoing sustainable cooperation,
problem solving and conflict resolution..
Theodore C. Sorensen, Senior
Counsel. Paul, Weiss. Rifkind. Wharton
& Garrison, New York (chair)
Diego Arria, former Amhassador to the
United Nations, Venezuela
James Carroll, author, Massachusetts
Richard J. Goldstone, Justice of the
Constitutional Court, South Africa
Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, founder,
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human
Rights, Virginia
Ismat Kittani. Special Advisor to the
Secretary-General of the United
Nations, Iraq
Tommy Koh. Ambassador-at-Large,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore
Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, former
President, International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
New York
Sari Nusseibeh. President, Al-Quds
University. Jerusalem
Judith Schneider, psychologist,
New York
George P. Shultz, former United States
Secretary 0r State, California
Paul Simon, former United States
Senator, Illinois
Stephen J. Solarz, former United
States Congressman, Virginia
Joshua Steiner, partner, Quadrangle
Group, New York
Liv Ullmann, film director and writer,
Norway
Tova Neugut will travel to Grenada,
where she will continue Brandeis’ presence with G R E N E D , the Grenada
Education and Development Programme.
Tova will be working on a documentary
history project covering the period of the
United States intervention in Grenada.
Nakisha Evans and Zachary Sherwin
will join Ikamva Lubantu, a non-profit
organization that supports democracy in
post-apartheid South Africa by providing
educational and economic resources to
community members in the townships.
The mandate of the Brandeis
Initiative in
Intercommunal
_ i Coexistence is to engage Brandeis
students, faculty, and staff in the theory
and practice of coexistence and, in the
process, to contribute to the emerging field
of coexistence.
Considerable attention has been
devoted this year to the development of a
leadership team for the Brandeis community. The six undergraduates, three graduate students, five members of the staff, and
two members of the faculty met for a twoday retreat in January. Supported by facilitators and a consulting artist, they shared
stories about the aesthetic inheritances
they bring to Brandeis. Leadership team
members also practiced listening skills and
explored issues of power in relation to
their various roles in the institution. Since
the retreat, the group has continued to meet
on a weekly basis and will develop an
action plan for the next two years.
Scholarly work on coexistence questions has continued to explore the theme
“Human Rights and Conflict Resolution:
Reconciling Two Approaches to
Coexistence.” Following this year’s faculty seminar series, the Center will begin
work on a publication that illustrates the
tension between human rights and conflict
resolution positions and that offers models
of work integrating elements from the two
fields. In addition, members of the faculty
have been awarded stipends to pursue the
questions raised by the seminar series
through scholarly work that links their
own disciplines to coexistence literature.
Among those to receive stipends from the
Brandeis Initiative are:
1. Dessima Williams, Sociology, for a
project engaging Grenadian citizens in
exploring structures and processes for reconciliation in the aftermath of the U.S.
intervention nearly twenty years ago
2. Avigdor Levy, Near Eastern and
Judaic Studies, for a work reviewing coexistence literature in light of his research on
Turkish-Jewish-Ottoman relations
3. Andreas Teuber, Philosophy, for
developing a coexistence and conflict resolution component in his Human Rights
course
4. April Powell-Willingham and John
Capitman, Heller School, for research on
the intersections of theory in Sustainable
Development, Conflict Resolution, and
Human Rights.
Brandeis
Initiative in
The
Intercommunal Coexistence is supported
by a generous grant from the Alan B.
Slifka Foundati0n.W
Coexistence Leadership Team:
Bill Thompson, Attila Klein
Coexistence Leadership Team:
Marco Barreto, Roxanne Morel
2000 Ethics and Coexistence
Student Fellows Sarah-Bess
Dworin, Andrew Slack, Tova
Neugut, and Sophia Moon, with
Brandeis president Jehuda
Reinharz. Not pictured: Zachary
Sherwin and Nakisha Evans
Michael
Ignatiefi journalist,
historian,
novelist, and television commentator, spent three
days at Brandeis
in January as a
Distinguished
Visitor of the Center and of the Andrei
Sakharov Archive and Human Rights
Center The following is excerpted from
“Human Rights Culture: The Political and
Spiritual Crisis, I’ a lecture given in Andrei
Sakharov’s honor on Tuesday, January 25,
2000. The Center will publish the lecture
in its entirety later in 2000.
The real human rights crisis of the last
fifteen years has followed from the collapse of states into civil war and ethnic
conflict. These are the situations of war of
all against all which produce most of the
human rights abuses of the present day.
These abuses cannot be stopped by international human rights activism alone, but 1
taken since the end of the Cold War, who
by institution building, by creating states
can
say that we have been successful? We
strong enough and legitimate enough to
recover their monopoly over the means of
promised to create safe havens for the
violence, imposing order and creating the
Bosnian Muslims. Because we did not
rule of law. And let us be explicit: democdeploy our peace-keepers with sufficient
racy alone is no solution, for democracy
armor, with robust rules of engagement,
too often becomes simply a legitimization
and with a chain of command capable of
of ethnic majority tyranny. See Croatia.
delivering timely close-air support, tens of
See Kosovo.
thousands of civilians in Srebrenica who
had entrusted their lives to us-“the interWe need to promote not just democranational community”-- perished at the
cy, but constitutionalism and the rule of
hands of Serbian execution squads. What
law and, to be frank, we may have to
choose between constitutionalism and
defenseless civilian in his right mind will
democracy. Authoritarian order which
ever trust the international community
provides some measure of procedural fairagain?
ness and due process is better than either
Rebuilding the credibility of human
anarchy or pure tyranny of the majority.
rights intervention means getting human
Where all order has disintegrated,
rights activists to talk to the military, and
when ethnic groups are fighting for their
for both of them to devise credible forms
very survival against a repressive state, it
of military deployment which can reliably
is fruitless to dispatch human rights moniprotect civilians in ethnic wars. The
tors or to expose the violators to intemamutual distrust between human rights
tional condemnation. The only effective
activists and military people must be
action is military intervention.
overcome if peace-keeping in any form is
Looking at the interventions we have 1 to be salvaged. H
Selected Highlights of Spring 2000 Events
January 26
“Virtual War: A Public Conversation” with writer Michael lgnatieff and respondents Thomas Doherty
(Brandeis University) and Andreas Teuber (Brandeis University)
February 24
“Public Schools for a Democratic Society” with Jay R. Kaufman, Sarah Cannon Holden, and Theodore
R. Sizer of the New Public Education Project
March 14
“Traditional Ethiopian Approaches to Reconciliation” by Tsehai Berhane-Selassie, Visiting Scholar and
anthropologist
March 22
“Dislocating Selves and Cultures: Perspectives from a South Asian Feminist” by Dr. Uma Narayan,
Professor of Philosophy, Vassar College
~~~
“The Japanese American Internment: Monuments and Memories” with Valerie Nao Yoshimura,
Japanese American Citizens League; Kanan Makiya, Brandeis University; and Jennifer Clark, Facing
History and Ourselves
.March 29
March 29
April 5
“Strangers and Neighbors: Contemporary Issues Between Blacks and Jews” with John Bracey and
Maurianne Adams, UMass, Amherst and Jyl Lynn Felman, Women’s Studies Program, Brandeis
University
..~
~_~~~
“Modern Griot and Storyteller: An Evening of Traditional Stories and Dance” with Dr. Raouf Mama,
Master Storyteller, Benin, West Africa
tion and a range of preventive mechanisms, and expand the latter for non-coercive, non-violent responses to signs of
incipient tension. So all of those mechanisms can be exhausted before you even
contemplate sending troops. . . .
Revisiting the Kosovan experience
one year later, it seems to me that none of
the fundamental underlying problems
have been resolved. Indeed, new ones
have been created. Far from engendering
of racism, it has sent the message that
heightened respect for the international
with sufficient determination groups that
The question that needs to be asked is,
rule of law, there is now heightened disare interested in eliminating minority
could anything have been done differently
respect for the international rule of law
populations from certain areas can do so
to have prevented this catastrophe? In
because it seemed to benefit the strong
with relative impunity as long as they can
other situations when you have clear indiand disadvantage the weak.
Far from
appeal to the international community in
cations that gross violations of human
heightened
respect
for
the
United
different kinds of ways.
rights are going to occur, what should you
Nations as the central body capable of
So it seems to me that the decision to
do? Michael Ignatieff, as we know, is
adjudicating
such
issues,
the
Kosovan
bomb
and the whole Kosovan experience is
inclined to suggest that the only thing that
intervention
undermined
and
challenged
a
challenge
to international order and has
groups that are intent on committing gross
the
authority
of
the
United
Nations
and
not
in
fact
provided
a good basis for thinkviolations of human rights are likely to
Annan
floundering.
Far
from
left
Kofi
ing about such interventions in the future.
understand is the deliberate and rapid
being a good example of humanitarian
We need to develop a whole new way of
application of superior force. I think that
intervention, it represents a bad example
conceptualizing of what a culture of prevenis a kind of counsel of defeat, and I would
of military intervention. Far from pretion might look like if we are to avoid such
like much more effort to go into heighteninterventions in the twenty-first century. H
venting ethnic cleansing and the scourge
ing and expanding the culture of preven---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------evin Clements, Secretary-General
of International Alert and former
i! d i r e c t o r o f G e o r g e M a s o n
University’s program in conflict resolution, came to campus for two days in
February. He led one of the Coexistence
Initiative’s faculty seminars, met with students, and gave a public talk. The following is excerpted from his public lecture,
‘NATO’S Decision to Bomb: Revisiting
K o s o v o O n e Y e a r Latel; ” given on
February 14, 2000.
K
Mary E. Davis, director of the
Brandeis Seminars in the Humanities,
has renewed the Center’s work .in the
field of juvenile justice. On March 22nd
she led a full-day seminar with the assistance of Judge Susan Ricci of the
Worcester Probate and Family Court. In
April Brandeis hosted three additional
juvenile justice seminars funded by the
State Justice Institute, and Professor
Davis and Stephen Arons traveled to
Madison to teach judges from the
Wisconsin State Supreme and Appellate
Courts. Professor Davis also spoke
about “Ten Years of Progress Toward
Gender Equality in the Massachusetts
Courts” during an April celebration by
the
Massachusetts
Trial
Court.. . .Excerpts of a speech delivered
by Ethics Center administrator, Marci
McPhee, at the Relief Society Women’s
Conference at Brigham Young
University were published in a recently
released book entitled The Arms of His
Love. The talk is based on her experiences working as a Mormon at Brandeis,
a Jewish-sponsored, non-sectarian university . . . .Wendi Adelson, 1999 Ethics
and Coexistence Student Fellow, has
been awarded a prestigious Truman
Scholarship. In recognition of Wendi’s
outstanding leadership potential, the
award will support up to $30,000 in graduate studies and enable her to pursue a
career in public service. Each year the
Truman Foundation awards one scholarship per state and up to thirty-two atlarge scholarships.. . . Brandeis
International Fellows Dragan Popadic
from Yugoslavia, Judith Green from
Israel, and Mirha Kratina from Bosnia
visited Brandeis in February to consult
with Ethics Center staff in compiling an
anthology of stories collected from the
Brandeis International Fellows. . . .
Eldad Elnekave, 1998 Ethics and
Coexistence Student Fellow, is continuing his post-graduate work as a Hart
Leadership Fellow of Duke University.
Eldad has moved to the Arab village of
Tamra in Israel, and is working on
research on communication between
female patients and their doctors.
In November 1999, Dr. Hizkias Assefa presented a series qf talks during his week-!ong residency entitled “‘Doing Jr$ice and Loving
Mercy: Perspectives on Coexistence and Reconciliation from an A$-ican Peacebuilder.” Dr. Assefa is coordinator of the -4frican
Network for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in Nairobi. The following is taken from his <first lecture, entitled “Conflict in Africa:
Causes, Dynamics and Implications for the Emerging Global Order. ”
T
J
nder colonialism and slavery, African traditional institutions of governance disintegrated and disappeared. The
glues of African societies became loose. Ethnic groups
were pitted against each other for the purpose of weakening them
in favor of the colonial master. In some instances, an ethnic hierarchy was created, in which some ethnic groups were made to rule
over the others.
Then, toward the end of colonialism, came the modernization
process. The economic, political and educational systems that were
put in place destroyed whatever was left of the systems that African
societies had evolved over generations. Education was used as an
instrument to supplant everything that was African, instead of
enhancing it, or adapting it to the emerging needs of African societies. This is not at all to imply that nothing good has come out of
the modernization process, or anything that is traditional is good.
No. There are many bad things about African traditions, and a lot
of good things have come out of the modernization process.
However, let me emphasize that prior to the colonial period, all traditional societies in Africa had developed values and institutions
that enabled them to make sense of their lives, to coexist with each
other, to cope with their environment, and to manage their
resources, slowly, over time.
When a system such as this is brutally dismantled as during
slavery and colonialism, and then what is left is discredited and
denigrated, then a deep trauma and disorientation happen. This
trauma has significant impact on conflicts at a personal, psychological, and social level.
I also want to touch on the global context in which African
conflicts play out, and the role it plays in contributing to or generating conflicts.. . The affluent society that constitutes 25% of the
world population controls over 75% of the world resources, and
dominates the global political and military power. There are some
policies that are emerging from the prevailing global order that are
fomenting or feeding conflicts in Africa, specifically structural
adjustment and privatization policies that are being pushed on the
poor and conflict regions in Africa. Even though the long term benefit of these policies can be debated, what we are observing is that
it is generating an increasing gap between the rich and the poor.
So we see that some of the causes and problems that underlie
conflicts in Africa seem to emerge out of unique African situations,
while others seem to be shared by all of us, as members of the global order, or the human race. I have told stories of slavery and colonialism, not to point accusing fingers, or inculcate guilt, but to warn
all of us of the immense capacity that we all have for evil. I want
to challenge us to hold hands together, to examine our conscience
to dismantle the values, practices, and institutions that we still have
today that enslave people and colonize their minds, even if they
may not be called slavery or colonialism. If we do not use the tale
of this suffering that we share to challenge us to bring about this
transformation, then indeed, the experience of African suffering has
been in vain.
There is increasing evidence that the polarization between rich
and poor is also happening within industrially advanced states.
Maybe therein lies hope for global partnership across borders -among those that have been alienated by the emerging order -- to
.
contribute to the creation of a much more compassionate and inclusive global system. n
Hizkias Assefa with Forsan Hussein, 1998 Ethics and Coexistence
Student Fellow
The Japanese American
Internment: Contemporary
Questions
etween January and March Brandeis University faculty
and students, area school teachers, and members of the
I/ Japanese American community gathered to discuss the
internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The seminar series represents a collaboration between the
International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life and
Facing History and Ourselves, a nationally regarded organization dedicated to training teachers to explore issues of prejudice in their classrooms. The project was initiated by Professor
of Romance and Comparative Literature, Erica Harth, who is
editing a book about the internment and the issues that emerge
from it.
Led by university scholars and teaching specialists, each
seminar focused on a different multi-layered theme. The
insights gathered as a result of the seminar series will be incorporated in a symposium about the Japanese American internment to be held in 2001. That event will bring together contributors to Professor Harth’s book, educators, scholars, and
members of the community to further discuss what we have
learned about such subjects as loyalty, bearing witness, and historical memory.
numla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who served on
: 2 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,
I’has been with the Center and the Coexistence Initiative as
a Visiting Faculty Associate during 1999-2000. During the
spring term, she offered a course for undergraduates and graduate students, entitled “The Rupture of Silence: The Truth and
Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. ” Ms. GobodoMadikizela’s recent work has focused on the complex nature of
empathy in post-apartheid South Africa. The following is an
excerpt from a talk entitled “‘Hearing the Cry of Apartheid’s
Crusadel; ” delivered on the Brandeis campus on February 10,
2000. It describes herfirst encounter with Eugene De Kock, the
architect of some of the most brutal violence perpetrated by the
apartheid regime.
As I approached the prison gate I parked the car and pondered the implications of being face to face with this murderous
man, “Prime Evil,” who was the personification of evil in the
eyes of so many South Africans, black and white. After a briefing by the head of the maximum-security prison, I was taken to
a small consulting room where de Kock was waiting for me.
When I entered into this consulting room de Kock was
dressed in orange overalls. I was seeing him for the first time. I
had seen his face many times in newspapers, and I had always
wondered about the boyish fear on his face. As I entered the
door, this again was the impression that I got of him. He got up
and kind of balanced himself against the wall. His legs were
chained. I remember feeling very offended or very uncomfortable about the idea of interviewing someone in chains. Already
I was beginning to feel for this person. And I couldn’t understand
what was going on with me. Why wasn’t I angry? Why wasn’t I
feeling the feelings of repulsion about this man called Prime
Evil?
When I asked him to tell me about the meeting with the
women whose husbands were killed by a bomb put together
through his instructions, his face immediately dropped. Sitting
directly across from me, his heavy glasses on the table that separated us, he shifted his eyes uncomfortably. His feet shuffled,
and I could hear the clatter of his leg chains. His mouth quivered, and there were tears in his eyes. As he started to speak his
hand trembled, and he became visibly distressed. With a breaking voice he said, “I wish I could do more than just say I’m sorry.
I wish there were a way of bringing their bodies back alive. I
wish I could say, ‘Here are your husbands.“’
A S he said this, he was demonstrating with his hands,
demonstrating a desperation expressed with a feeling of needing
to bring their bodies back. He was gesturing with his arms outstretched, but he said, “Unfortunately I have to live with it.” As
he said this, the table between us seemed to collapse. And reaching to him the only way one does in such human circumstances
seemed natural.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
When I touched his clenched hand, it was cold and rigid. I
felt as if he were holding back. This caused me to recoil for i
moment and to reflect on the spontaneous act of humanity a:
something incompatible with a circumstance with a perpetrato
of such serious atrocities. However, other than his clenched fist
I could find nothing incongruous between his show of emotion
and my response.
I had held back tears but let go of them the moment I enterer
the car for the drive back to Johannesburg. I was angry, but i
wasn’t de Kock who was the object of my anger, but white peo
ple. Why did they continue to enjoy the fruits of apartheid ant
the oppression of black people, instead of speaking out agains
it? Why did they allow humanity to be destroyed in the way tha
de Kock’s was? That moment of shared humanity between d,
Kock and myself seemed to open up a window into thekinds o
human possibility that would have been possible for de Kock haa
he not been brought up under a system that encouraged huma
corruption. Throughout the drive, frightened, angry, and con
fused, I blamed white society. I put myself in de Kock’s shoe
and turned his experience in my head over and over again, an’
wondered ‘where I would be had our roles been reversed. n
---
n ambitious new project that aims to shape
public policy debate on education in
Massachusetts began under the Center’s aus“A New Public Education” is
designed to engage educators, politicians, and the
public in a disciplined and deliberative process to
renew public education in Massachusetts.
The project brings together a unique and talented
leadership team: director Jay R. Kaufman, a sitting
Massachusetts state legislator; associate director
Sarah Cannon Holden, a lawyer/mediator with extensive local school committee experience; and associate director Theodore R. Sizer, founder of the
Coalition of Essential Schools and one of the bestknown thinkers and practitioners in American education today.
At a time when .questions of quality, governance,
and finance raise serious doubts about the preparedness of schools and school-aged children for the 21st
century, the project proposes to rebuild the foundations of public education to better reflect the values
and social realities of our time. Unlike other recent
efforts at education reform, which have focused on
fine tuning the current system, this three-phase project seeks to address a set of fundamental and critical
pedagogical questions.
Work on the project began this spring, focused
on a new Brandeis Course, ED 150, “Public Schools
and Democracy.” Undergraduates and graduate students have assisted with research on designing new
public education systems for the 21st century. Over
the course of the next twelve months, the project
staff will be conducting conversations and public
meetings around Massachusetts, with an eye towards
developing specific policy recommendations.
“A New Public Education” is funded by the Leo
and Julia Forchheimer Foundation. n
The Internutionul Center for
Ethics, Justice, and Public Life
Non-Profit
Organization
U.S. Postage
Brandeis University
MS 086 l?O.Box 9110
Waltham, MA 02454-9110 USA
PAlD
Boston, MA
Permit No. 15731
Tel : 781-736-8577
l
F&C: 781-736-8561
l
E-mail: ethics@brandeis.edu
4